Virtual social capital: features of network and gaming resources in the development of cognitive and educational activities of high school students

Abstract

Introduction. In the context of digitalization of education, the information and educational environment is actively developing, including formal corporate information resources and communication networks, as well as informal (non-corporate) interaction networks, whose function is performed by popular social networks and instant messengers. The digitalization of education is becoming an important factor in the formation of virtual interaction between the main parties of the educational process, namely, students, their parents and teachers. Virtual social capital is being formed as one of the ways to maintain, develop and structure human social ties in the information society. The purpose of this article is to study the features of the use of social network resources for solving cognitive and educational problems by high school students. Materials and methods: 1) handout survey for 358 students of grades 9-11 of secondary schools, lyceums and gymnasiums in the city of Kirov (Russian Federation); 2) secondary analysis of data from empirical studies on this issue (descriptive analysis). Results. The high involvement of teachers and high school students in popular social networks has been shown: up to 98% of high school students have their personal accounts, every fifth teacher uses social networks for work. Every day, teenagers spend 1 to 3 hours on social networks, regardless of their grade (χ2=3.5, df=6, р=0.74), 1 to 2 hours playing online games. 70% of high school students are subscribed to public pages that help to do homework, one third, to popular science public pages. High school students noted that thanks to computer games they improve their skills in mastering a foreign language, knowledge of basic subjects, and in every tenth case, they developed a desire for self-knowledge. Conclusion. The study showed that virtual social networks and online games perform important auxiliary functions, complementing the information and educational environment of the student: in addition to the communicative and leisure functions, they also perform organizational and information search functions. Social networks are becoming an important part of the virtual social capital of contemporary schoolchildren, as well as other parties to the educational process.